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Transparent Display on Laptop Screen

The transparent display is a great optical illusion where you have to decide first what background you desire to use, if you have objects that are halfways behind the monitor such as the pool cue on the right edge of the laptop's screen in the picture above. I’d recommend you start with static objects inside your home; however, if the weather is nice you can try a landscape.
 

We will explain here two ways of creating this optical illusion:

Method 1: Requires no alteration of images, but requires that you remove and place the laptop in the same position. In this case you need to take 3 pictures. A tripod is highly recommended.  In this method you will be using the zoom feature of your camera to take a picture of the place where the display of your laptop should be.

Method 2: This method doesn't require that you remove and place the laptop in the same position, but it does require that you use a image alteration software such as paintbrush or fireworks to overlap two pictures using transparency and cutout a portion of the original background image to be placed it in the desktop.  This method also requires 3 pictures and a tripod is also highly recommended.  No zooming is required in method 2.

Method 1.

 
Once you decide the place where you want to create your optical illusion, you need to place your laptop in front of the picture that you want to display on the laptop desktop. If you have a tripod (highly recommended) you can use it to make sure that the pictures are taken from the same place, angle, direction, and distance. After you placed the camera on the tripod you need to zoom in to focus the laptop screen with your camera. Then, you are going to remove the laptop to take the picture, but before you remove it you need to mark where the laptop was you can simple use two stick it note to mark one of the laptop corners. Also, it is important to keep the same angle for the laptop screen otherwise you wont get accurate results.
 
Now, you have to download the picture on you laptop. For example, you can create a folder under “My pictures” named “Optical Illusion Games” and the picture can be “Opti-1.jpg”. Once you have downloaded the picture on your laptop, you need to change the desktop picture on your laptop. Therefore, go ahead and right click on your laptop desktop and go to properties. Then, select the Desktop tab, browse your picture, open it, and apply the changes.
 
The final step is to place the laptop in the same place where it was, and take the final picture. If there is an object that goes beyond the laptop screen like the picture with flowers or the pool stick is better because it gives an even more realistic transparency effect. A final note, if the flash seems to be a problem because it reflects on the laptop screen you can try this without flash.
 

Method 2.

This method is a good option if you are confortable using image editing software such as adobe paintbrush or macromedia fireworks.

These are the steps to achieve this optical illusion using this method:

  1. Pick an appropriate place to create your optical illusion.
  2. Take a picture of the general area without the laptop.
  3. Place the laptop in the desired position.  If the screen of the laptop's display is facing the camera directly the effect will be more easily achieved.
  4. Take a picture with the laptop on the background.
  5. Use your image editing software to make a cutout of the background with the exact size of the laptop screen.  To achive this, you will need to use two layers, placing the photograph with the laptop (from step 3)  in the back, placing the photograph of the background (from step 2) on the front, making the front layer 50% transparent, and using the cutting tool to cut out the portion of the background image that is behind the monitor.  Paste this cutout into a new image, save it, and place in a thumb drive.
  6. Bring the saved cutout image to your laptop with a thumb drive, upload it, and place it as the desktop bacground of your laptop.
  7. Without changing the settings of your camera, take the final picture which should look like the one in the bellow.

Transparent display monitor laptop computer optical illusion

 

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